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Thursday, January 19, 2017

Mike Whitney — The Trump Speech That No One Heard

Contrasting visions of US foreign policy. Will Trump's foreign policy realism and a focus on US national interests prevail in the coming years, or will it be more of the same foreign policy idealism based on liberal interventionism and attempted global Americanization — because American exceptionalism? The battle is joined, with the US deep state on the attack even before the inauguration.

It is an extraordinary situation. The ruling class seems by and large quite shocked by the election result. Donald Trump is surely a representative of the class—in that he’s a billionaire for god sake—but, for the majority of the richest and most powerful, not their preferred choice as chief executive of the USA. This is apparent by Trump’s treatment at the hands of the corporate media (that he continues to insult), by the foreign policy establishment, by the intelligence agencies (which he sometimes disparages), by Congressional leaders of both parties who generally regret that he won. The Deep State seems to have its knives drawn for him.

3 comments:

You seem to want to take what Trump says at face value when it suits your desired worldview, but this strikes me as naive. The man is terribly inconsistent on pretty much every topic but dealmaking. In this specific instance, how can you want to become isolationist and stay out of others' business and at the same time talk about nukes and expanding the military? It's incoherent. Most everything the man says is incoherent.